One criticism of co-creation, which comes up most often in the realm of the more traditional creative art forms, is that the co-creation process is merely creating art by committee. With rare exceptions, this calamitous practice yields mediocre dreck—an undistinguished collision of noise, ideas, compromise, sacrifice, and a lack of vision and leadership.

We heard this over and over from various innovators, including Virgin’s Branson who lives by, “Screw it, Let’s do it,” and Skype’s Zennström, who made the following analogy between action and entrepreneurial success: Say that you have one of those reality shows on TV and you drop a bunch of people in the middle of a desert island. The winner is the person who gets to the shore the quickest. Some people try to analyze where they are, which direction to go. Some of them say, “Let’s climb up a tree or a rock or hillside and maybe we can see further and figure out what is the best direction...

you can sometimes spend too much time deliberately attacking a problem when some creative ideas will only emerge after putting yourself in a relaxed state with no distractions.6 If all else fails when trying to figure out a problem, go to sleep. Yes, Harvard researchers have found that sleep is a consistent antidote to tunnel vision toward a problem. So when find yourself stuck in a thinking rut, give the problem extra time to percolate by adding some sleep into the mix. On average, that sleep will give you a 33 percent better chance of connecting the unconnected and getting a great new idea.7